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Communications

Tools of communication have transformed American society time and again over the past two centuries. The Museum has preserved many instruments of these changes, from printing presses to personal digital assistants.

The collections include hundreds of artifacts from the printing trade and related fields, including papermaking equipment, wood and metal type collections, bookbinding tools, and typesetting machines. Benjamin Franklin is said to have used one of the printing presses in the collection in 1726.

More than 7,000 objects chart the evolution of electronic communications, including the original telegraph of Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell's early telephones. Radios, televisions, tape recorders, and the tools of the computer age are part of the collections, along with wireless phones and a satellite tracking system.

These recording discs were made for the Brush Company “Mail-A-Voice” dictating machine. This set of 62 discs includes several slightly different types, the most significant difference being that some are paper and some are plastic. All are flexible and coated with a magnetizable powder. The Mail-A-Voice was designed by German immigrant Semi J. Begun who also used the device for personal correspondence. Several of the discs in the set are audio letters from Begun to his mother.

This prototype wireless telegraph key is from 1941. Until recently “wireless” meant radio and operators used keys to send radio messages via Morse code. The key is a semi-automatic device made by Lynn G. Heatherly. While working for the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company in Jacksonville, NC, Heatherly received US Patent #2,323,133 for this improved key. A semi-automatic key repeated the Morse code dots rapidly, much like holding down a key on a keyboard for repeated letters. The operator still keyed the dashes but could work much faster.

The Anglo-American Telegraph Company was organized in 1865 as a joint British-American venture to lay an Atlantic telegraph cable. After three failed attempts by other telegraph companies, Anglo-American Telegraph Company successfully laid and operated the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1866. The company operated cables until 1912, when they were leased to Western Union

Summary

Records relating to the organization of the company, corporate and financial records. Corporate records include two volumes of the company's acts, charters, contracts and agreements, 1862-1883; minutes of board meetings relating to varied subjects, such as agreements between the company and other telegraph companies such as Western Union Telegraph concerning sales of property, details of trnsactions or purchases undertaken by the company. Financial records consist of nine volumes of "journals" showing monthly records of receipts, 1866-1912; nineteen volumes of ledgers reveal a detailed financial status of the company, 1866-1912; and nine volumes of cash books consist of the financial transactions of the company, 1904-early 1941. See also 1 folder of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company telegrams in the Warshaw Collection under the heading "Telegraphs"

Flat, rectangular, celluloid card advertising the West Springfield Trust Co. Christmas Club. Yellow with black and red print, it carries the Christmas Club emblem, a black square with red and green holly in the center of card. This square contains information that reminds holders to make Christmas Club payments. In red and green print on back is a calendar for 1940.

Christmas Clubs are savings plans in which bank customers make scheduled deposits throughout the year into a Christmas account and received the money around the holidays to shop for gifts. This card is a product of Christmas Club, A Corporation of Eaton, Pennsylvania, which sold financial institutions all of the materials they would need to create a Christmas Club.

During World War II, after the breakdown of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, the Soviet news agency TASS issued a series of propaganda posters. Topics included anti-Nazi caricatures and Socialist Realist art encouraging the war effort. Beginning in June 1941, the Union of Soviet Artists established a publishing collective to produce the posters on an almost daily basis. Because they were displayed in the windows of the news agency's Moscow office, they are known as TASS window posters. It is estimated that about 1,500 different posters were produced between 1941 and 1945.

Well-known artists and poets worked on the designs and captions, and most of the posters were produced in limited editions using the stencil process for both graphics and text. Many posters were completed and reproduced within 24 hours, making them very responsive to political issues and war news. Copies were distributed abroad by VOKS, the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Their messages helped present the USSR favorably to its new allies, including the U.S. The Museum has six of these posters received in 1943 through VOKS. Other collections outside Russia include the University of Nottingham in England and Columbia and Cornell universities in the U.S.

William Dandridge Terrell (1871-1965) was born in rural Virginia and worked in government service for twenty-two years in the communications field. His specific duties are unknown, but in 1911, after his government service, he was appointed to a New York civilian post. His new duty was to insure the efficient operation of the freshly pioneered wireless apparatus on all Atlantic based Naval ships. In 1915, Terrell was transferred to Washington, D.C. where he supervised a staff of thirty-five. As Chief of Radio Division in the Commerce Department, Terrell was responsible for monitoring the [the use of?] radio nation's defense forces. Terrell was promoted to Chief of Field Operations for the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), which was created in 1934. Terrell continued in that post even when the FRC was changed to Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Terrell retired to Florida in 1943 at the age of 72. He died on March 23, 1965

Summary

Collection documents William Dandridge Terrell's life from his 1911 appointment to the Commerce Department to the his death in the 1960s. The collection consists of a brief and partially completed autobiography and descendant listing; a large body of correspondence related to financial planning, insurance policies, and appointment notices; a program from an American Wireless Operators Convention held in his honor; several retirement announcements; business correpsondence concerning Terrell's inspection job from 1911-1914; and four photographs of Terrell, his family, and his friends.

Cite as

William Dandridge Terrell Papers, 1911-1964, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

During World War II, the United States government recognized that full public support and dedication to the war effort was essential to victory. To bolster support, the government hired artists to create propaganda posters, designed to promote patriotism with simple, catchy slogans and colorful images. Toiling factory workers, thrifty home front mothers, and fearless soldiers were among the most popular images used by artists to communicate the message.

This 1942 poster commissioned by the War Shipping Administration encouraged a specific mission, designed to attract former seamen back into the Merchant Marine. At the time, American shipyards were producing cargo ships faster than crews could be assembled, forcing recruiters to rely not only on new volunteers, but also to persuade experienced mariners to leave retirement and go back to sea.

The creation of incentive posters mainly fell under the watch of the Office of War Information, a government agency created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1942 to consolidate public information services and coordinate the sanctioned release of war news. The OWI reviewed and approved the content of newsreels, radio broadcasts, and billboards, in addition to producing hundreds of posters. Initially, the most pressing message to be communicated through posters was a warning to Americans about the dangers of discussing sensitive information like production schedules and troop movements that could be overheard by enemy spies. Over the course of the war, posters covered a variety of topics, such as encouraging the purchase of war bonds and galvanizing the work force at shipyards to keep production going on the assembly line.

Harris, radio engineer and executive, served in various capacities in the Tropical Radio Telegraph Company, a subsidiary of the United Fruit Company, 1916-1963

Summary

Correspondence, notes, articles, and photographs assembled by Harris on the history of the United Fruit Company and Tropical Radio Telegraph Company (TRT), 1904-1961. Also includes manuscript histories of companies; material on the application of teletypewriters to radio circuits; blueprints, schematics, reports, and manuals concerning the technical work on TRT; and a scrapbook of William Edgar Beakes, president of TRT, 1939-1943

Cite as

Charles Cohill Harris Collection, ca. 1906-1976, Archives Center, National Museum of American History